Why Is Trump Refusing to Sign Transition of Power Agreements?

It's not for a good reason.

The Trump Transition Team continues to refuse to sign Transition of Power documents with the White House and GSA. Why? So they can avoid FBI background checks on their nominees.

The Presidential Transition Act has been in place since JFK’s assassination in 1963, when the transfer of power was extremely chaotic. It was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Major party nominees are supposed to sign these agreements six months before the presidential election. Trump has still refused to sign them. He is simply ignoring the law, just like he did when the government was trying to get him to return stolen classified documents.

The Biden White House has continued to reach out to the Trump team to get them to sign these agreements, and are being ignored. The purpose of these agreements is to ensure a smooth and seamless transition of power from one administration to the next. Since the documents haven’t been signed, the government is unable to grant security clearances or provide briefings to incoming administration officials, other than Trump.

But that also means that FBI can't conduct background checks on Trump nominees, and that is the key. Trump has taken the unusual step of hiring a private company to conduct the background checks (rather poorly), which clearly shows that this is the primary motive behind their refusal to sign the agreements. JD Vance has already disclosed that Trump is going to fire FBI Director Chris Wray. They obviously do not want the current FBI digging into the shady backgrounds of any of Trump’s picks.

Typically the results of these FBI background checks are provided to Senators prior to confirmation hearing and interviews with nominees to give them as much information as possible about them. That is what Trump wants to prevent. He wants to ram them through a Republican Senate as quickly as possible with as little scrutiny as possible.

Transition agreements also provide office space, IT equipment, office supplies, fleet vehicles, mail management, and payment of compensation and other expenses to incoming members of the Administration. So the Trump team will also not have any of those things made available to them.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre talked about the problem this week: “We certainly are stressing that the White House and the administration stand ready to provide assistance and that access to services and information certainly outlined in the GSA, and the White House memorandum of agreement. So, those conversations continue. And we want this to go smoothly, and that's what we're trying to get to." 

Trump is ignoring the law, and doing it for a nefarious reason. This is precisely what we warned about repeatedly. Trump doesn’t care about the Constitution, or a federal statute that has been in existence since 1963. The Courts do not seem willing to check him - in fact, they granted him immunity from crimes committed in office. His incoming Republican Congress seems prepared to let him do whatever he wants.

The next four years is going to be very difficult. All we can do is to continue to expose the lies, hypocrisy, law violations, thuggery, and despotism. Then hope at some point there will be a reckoning for all this criminality, even though it won’t be any time soon

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